“A multitude of organisms’ livelihoods shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces”, as Kirksey and Heimreich would say: one more step away from the anthropocentric interpretation of nature has been taken, in this spirit, at the Frac des Pays de la Loire.

A cross-material exploration of multispecies ethnography has been the base for the development of the 32nd International Workshops held by the French institution, part of the France-Romania 2019 year. Frac invited curator Diana Marincu to design a residency with six Romanian artists.

The core of “Manufacturing nature/ Naturalizing the synthetic” as both a residency and an exhibition is therefore to reflect on the clashing binary of human and nature, as well as on the political implications of what is called today “the material fatigue”.

The project explores ecocentric ecology as a network of processes rather than definitions, a continuous exchange characterizing the contemporary post-human condition and blurring ontological borders that were taken for granted for so long.

In the idea of the project: “The nature-culture continuum is being questioned through the means of genetic, chemical and technological developments, while the empowerment of men is disrupted by new ways of addressing nature and the natural.”

Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan explore Debrisphere, the altered geology of particles where traces of war (like the 1944 Normandy landings) can create micro-monuments invisible to the naked eye; Nona Inescu focuses on the connection between human body and concretions, establishing a tender, empathic, relation between the two.

Olivia Mihălțianu focuses on the analogy between grafting and splicing, drawing a parallel between plant manipulation and film editing made visible through the medium of cyanotypes, while Vlad Nancă questions the 20th Century Modernist utopias by borrowing the Superstudio Grid (as a mediation system for space,symbol for horizontal equality) and letting wild nature challenge it, by growing nonchalantly and defying any imposed rules.

The performative research by Alex Mirutziu turns the eyes from a horizontal perspective/gaze — “responsible for productivity, anxiety, and most importantly for the mirroring of the self” — to a vertical evaluation of the space, shifting the perception of the room and allowing for an infinite inclusion of the text, the exhibition space, the audience in a whole.